How do I get the whole organization to truly embrace the customer?

My client is disappointed with their results. Their experience improvement efforts have been successful, but not as wildly successful as they had hoped. 

When my client shared this with me on a recent call, I was neither surprised nor perplexed about what was going on with them. Getting the whole organization to embrace the customer requires more than most organizations think. 

You see, when you start an improvement program, you want some quick wins. So, you address the most obvious areas first, fixing problems and enhancing interactions by defining how you want customers to feel about you when it’s over. These elementary steps are necessary, important to prioritize, and, to many companies’ chagrins, just the beginning of the process. 

Every department in the organization plays a role in the Customer Experience. However, not every department realizes it. Some of them think their insular role inside operations puts a big barrier between them and how the customer feels about the organizations. But it doesn’t; in fact, that barrier doesn’t exist. 

In this episode we explore the steps you take to get these internal departments to look past the non-existent barrier they think is there and understand how what they do affects the experience. We explain how you can then leverage their buy in to get to the outstanding results that you expected but are still waiting to realize.

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 06:33  Colin explains what he plans to do to address this problem, starting with first step, which might surprise you in its simplicity.
• 09:07  We explain the many ways that Human Resources plays a significant role in the Customer Experience and embracing customer-centricity. 
• 13:21  Ryan explains that first-ordered thinking might be getting in the way of your efforts to help other departments see the effects of their actions on the experience and what you can do about it.     
• 18:40  We discuss the ways that finance is essential to the experience, and, spoiler alert, it has to do with $$$$.
• 23:33  Colin makes a point that Legal, which definitively needs to protect the company, also needs to be customer centric and how they can be without getting disbarred. 
• 26:31  We share the last example of how IT has become one of the most essential parts of the experience, especially when you consider the importance of managing the organization’s online presence and technology integrations.

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